Self-driving services use AI and machine learning to help organizations lower cost, reduce risk, accelerate innovation, and get predictive insights

Oracle CloudWorld, NEW YORK—Feb 12, 2018

Oracle President of Product Development Thomas Kurian demonstrated the latest advances in Oracle Cloud Platform, expanding its Oracle Cloud Platform Autonomous Services beyond the Oracle Autonomous Database, to make all Oracle Cloud Platform services self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing. With its enhanced suite of autonomous Cloud Platform services, Oracle is setting a new industry standard for autonomous cloud capabilities. Oracle is applying AI and machine learning to its entire next-generation Cloud Platform services to help customers lower cost, reduce risk, accelerate innovation, and get predictive insights.

As organizations focus on delivering innovation fast, they want a secure set of comprehensive, integrated cloud services to build new applications and run their most demanding enterprise workloads. Only Oracle’s cloud services can automate key operational functions like tuning, patching, backups and upgrades while running to deliver maximum performance, high availability, and secure enterprise IT systems. In addition, to accelerate innovation and smarter decision making, Oracle Cloud Platform is incorporating additional autonomous capabilities specific to application development, mobile and bots, app and data integration, analytics, security and management.

“The future of tomorrow’s successful enterprise IT organization is in full end-to-end automation,” said Kurian. “At Oracle, we are making this a reality.We are weaving autonomous capabilities into the fabric of our cloud to help customers safeguard their systems, drive innovation faster, and deliver the ultimate competitive advantage with smarter real-time decisions.”

Oracle’s autonomous capabilities are integral to the entire Oracle Cloud Platform, including the world’s first autonomous database unveiled at Oracle OpenWorld. The Oracle Autonomous Database uses advanced AI and machine learning to eliminate human labor, human error and manual tuning delivering unprecedented availability, high performance and security at a much lower cost. Multiple autonomous database services, each tuned to a specific workload, will be available in 2018, including Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud Service for analytics, Oracle Autonomous Database OLTP for transactional and mixed workloads, and Oracle Autonomous NoSQL Database for fast, massive-scale reads and writes.

In addition to the Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Cloud Platform autonomous capabilities for application development, mobile and bots, integration, analytics, security and system management, are scheduled to be available in the first half of calendar year 2018. Oracle Cloud Platform services all share foundational autonomous capabilities including:

· Self-Repairing for Higher Availability: Provide automated protection from all planned and unplanned downtime with up to 99.995 percent availability, resulting in less than 2.5 minutes of downtime per month including planned maintenance.

Examples of additional autonomous capabilities being added to functional areas across the rest of the Oracle Cloud Platform include:

Oracle today also demonstrated a single Oracle Digital Assistant for users to interact across Oracle’s SaaS and PaaS services including analytics. Oracle Digital Assistant provides centralized connection for the user to converse across the user’s CRM, ERP, HCM, custom applications and business intelligence data and uses AI to intelligently correlate data and automate user behavior.

To empower the office of the CFO with data-driven insights they need to adapt to change, capitalize on new market opportunities, and increase profitability, Oracle today announced new artificial intelligence-based applications for finance. By applying advanced data science and machine learning to data from the Oracle Data Cloud and from partners, the new Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) help automate transactional work and streamline business processes.

Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications for ERP are designed to enhance existing applications, including financials, procurement, enterprise performance management, order management, and manufacturing within the ERP Cloud suite.

CFOs and modern finance professionals are under pressure to increase the agility and effectiveness of their organizations. As such, they need to constantly monitor and assess what is working and what is not and redeploy resources for maximum returns.

“To increase their agility, organizations need to leverage the right tools to help improve process efficiency and uncover insights that can guide a business forward,” said Rondy Ng, senior vice president, Oracle Applications Development. “Oracle helps finance leaders drive business transformation with ready-to-go applications that combine advanced machine learning with the industry’s most comprehensive suite of cloud applications to deliver immediate value and results.”

· Better insight: Applying analytics and artificial intelligence to finance can improve performance and increases agility across payables, receivables, procurement, and fiscal period close processes. Intelligent applications are also able to provide suggested actions to help mitigate vendor risk and fraud activity by detecting exceptions in vendor selection criteria.

· Smarter business outcomes: Oracle delivers immediate impact by infusing machine learning across the entire suite of business applications; this is done by leveraging data from the Oracle Data Cloud and from partners to derive insights across multiple channels and platforms, including finance, HR, and project management to support strategic business decision-making.

· Increased influence: The rich insights available to finance leaders via artificial intelligence empower CFOs to anticipate what comes next for the business and to make wise decisions, increasing the influence of the CFO and finance team in the organization.

For example, using Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications for ERP can help a finance team at a large national retail brand collect first-party data on their suppliers, such as supplier purchase history, percentage of revenue, discounts taken with third-party data on supplier revenue, credit score, and other company attributes. The finance organization can then decide which suppliers to double down on and which to cease doing business with for maximum cost savings, while maintaining quality standards. The ability to quickly fine tune the business based on data-driven insights will increase the finance function’s value in the organization and CEOs will increasingly rely on the CFO and finance team for strategic recommendations to improve business performance.

By applying advanced data science and machine learning to Oracle’s web-scale data and an organization’s own data, the new Adaptive Intelligent Apps can react, learn, and adapt in real time based on historical and dynamic data, while continuously delivering better business insights.

According to the Gartner report, “Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on Financial Management Applications,” written by Nigel Rayner and Christopher Iervolino, “The transformational potential of AI in financial management applications will come in the next two to three years as more AI technologies are embedded directly into financial management processes to automate complex, non-routine activities with little or no human intervention. Also, using AI to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of financial forecasting and planning will transform these processes.”1

The Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps are built into the existing Oracle Cloud Applications to deliver the industry’s most powerful AI-based modern business applications across finance, human resources, supply chain and manufacturing, commerce, customer service, marketing, and sales. The apps are powered by insights from the Oracle Data Cloud, which is the largest third-party data marketplace in the world with a collection of more than 5 billion global consumer and business IDs and more than 7.5 trillion data points collected monthly.

Report: Cloud Services to Increase U.S. GDP by $2 Trillion over the Next Decade

New research from Dr. Michael Mandel, senior fellow at the Mack Institute of Innovation Management at Wharton, predicts cloud accessibility to technologies such as blockchain, AI, and automation, will power the next big wave of U.S. productivity

Oracle Modern Finance Experience, New York, NY—Feb 14, 2018

Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) today published a report examining the potential impact of cloud services on the United States economy. Authored by Dr. Michael Mandel, senior fellow at the Mack Institute of Innovation Management at the Wharton School and commissioned by Oracle, the report estimates that a cumulative US$2 trillion will be added to U.S. Gross Domestic Product over the next ten years as a result of the productivity and innovation gains that cloud services will deliver. These gains will be attained through the widespread diffusion of advanced technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, machine learning, and intelligent automation; as well as industry best practices.

Dr. Mandel’s research shows a widening productivity divide between the organizations and industries that have invested in software technologies and those that haven’t. But, the report predicts cloud services will close the productivity gap as organizations and industries that have traditionally lagged in technology adoption begin to take advantage of more cost effective and accessible cloud-based solutions. These gains will benefit workers, shareholders, and the broader economy.

“The cloud era will give low-productivity organizations and industries access to the same technology and best practices that companies in high-productivity industries benefit from,” said Dr. Michael Mandel. “By standardizing and automating routine tasks, the lower producers will increase efficiency and reduce the cost of many processes, which will help them self-fund further investments in technology, develop new capabilities, and redeploy and hire resources for higher-level and better-paid tasks.”

One low-productivity industry that is well-poised to take advantage of emerging cloud technologies is healthcare—a $3 trillion industry.

“Cloud services now provide us with the basis for integrating our financial data with population health data,” said Michael Murray, senior vice president and chief financial officer at Blue Shield of California, which provides healthcare coverage for more than four million Americans. “Through data analytics and better population health management, the United States could remove hundreds of millions of dollars in costs out of the healthcare system. It’s a huge economic opportunity and will ultimately enhance clinical quality and patient outcomes.”

“The potential impact of emerging technologies on society cannot be understated,” noted Dave Donatelli, executive vice president, Cloud Business Group, Oracle. “In addition to creating new jobs and industries based on technology innovations in areas such as 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and cognitive computing, new technologies can help address some of our country’s basic needs. For example, many Americans are struggling to afford the high cost of healthcare coverage and basic medical expenses. Imagine if technology could predict illness and health risks to keep the population healthier. Similarly, cloud-based technologies have the potential to bring down the cost of education, using artificial intelligence, bots, and IoT to create more efficient institutions and better student outcomes.”

As part of the research, Dr. Mandel conducted in-depth interviews with CEOs, CFOs, and other top executives at companies in key industries identified as essential to U.S. economic growth.

World-leading gaming and entertainment company selects Oracle Cloud Applications to transform business processes

Redwood Shores, Calif.—Feb 14, 2018

Caesars Entertainment Corporation, the world’s most diversified casino entertainment company, has selected Oracle Cloud Applications to improve the experiences of its guests and employees. With Oracle Cloud Applications, Caesars Entertainment has increased business agility and reduced costs by streamlining financial processes and improving employee productivity and engagement across its entire business operations, which includes Harrah’s, Caesars and Horseshoe.

To modernize business processes while continuing to provide its guests with unsurpassed service across 47 properties in five countries, Caesars Entertainment needed to completely rethink its existing business systems. With Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud and Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud services, Caesars Entertainment has transformed its business by connecting 650 disparate systems to a cloud-based solution that unifies business and employee data on a modern, unified platform.

“We are always looking at how we can provide guests with the best possible services and products,” said Keith Causey, senior vice president and chief accounting officer, Caesars Entertainment. “While we have traditionally focused on the guest experience, a critical part of that process involves the business applications we use to run our organization. Oracle Cloud Applications enabled us to modernize our financial and HR systems so that we could quickly and easily embrace industry best practices, connect disparate applications and data sets and improve productivity.”

Oracle Cloud Applications will enable Caesars Entertainment to benefit from a complete and fully integrated suite of business applications. With Oracle ERP Cloud, Caesars Entertainment will be able to increase productivity, lower costs and improve controls by eliminating spreadsheets and manual processes. Oracle HCM Cloud will enable Caesars Entertainment to find, grow and retain the best talent and achieve complete workforce insights by streamlining access to internal and external talent and delivering advanced reporting and analytics.

“Caesars Entertainment has become part of the American culture, earning its place in the minds of millions worldwide,” said Steve Miranda, executive vice president of applications development at Oracle. “With Oracle Cloud Applications, Caesars Entertainment has embraced modern finance and HR best practices, increased productivity and dedicated more resources to its ongoing mission to provide guests with amazing experiences.”

“Technology plays an important role in the healthcare industry, from helping offices run more efficiently to enabling hospital staff to deliver more accurate diagnoses and save more lives,” said Steve Miranda, Executive Vice President, Applications Product Development, Oracle. “Oracle Cloud Applications will significantly improve business systems and organizational efficiency to help Providence St. Joseph Health provide superior patient care and better respond to community health needs.”

Oracle delivers a comprehensive set of subscription-based cloud infrastructure services that enables businesses to run any workload in an enterprise-grade cloud managed, hosted and supported by Oracle. Zenedge expands Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle’s Domain Name System (DNS) capabilities, adding innovative application and network protection that augments existing Oracle security services and partnerships. Together, Oracle and Zenedge will allow enterprises to adopt cloud services without compromising performance, cost, control or security through an expanded Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform.

“Customers demand enterprise-grade infrastructure to run their critical business systems in the cloud,” said Don Johnson, Senior Vice President of Product Development, Oracle. “Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a Service delivers leading cloud services to address those needs. The combination with Zenedge equips Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with integrated, next-generation network and infrastructure security, to address modern security threats.”

“Customers achieve tremendous results with Zenedge’s innovative WAF and DDoS mitigation products, from a 99% reduction in illicit website traffic to a 99.75% improvement in page load times,” said Yuri Frayman, CEO of Zenedge. “We could not be more enthusiastic about joining forces with the leader in enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure, and delivering similar results to even more customers at scale.”

Awards recognize organizations using modern cloud technologies to drive business transformation

Oracle Modern Finance Experience, New York—Feb 15, 2018

To promote best practices and celebrate the success organizations are achieving by modernizing financial and operational processes in the cloud, Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) today announced the winners of the 2018 Change Agents of Finance Awards. The awards recognize top organizations and business leaders that are driving growth by embracing Oracle cloud solutions and modern best practices to transform the finance function and other critical business processes.

The 2018 Change Agents of Finance Awards is a global program that encompasses 10 categories that represent the best of twenty-first century finance. Finalists were nominated and voted for by their finance peers based on their ability to deliver tangible business results through the application of innovative cloud technologies to their unique business case.

“The Change Agents of Finance Awards recognize visionary leaders that are reimagining their finance functions in order to thrive and grow in today’s digital economy,” said Doug Kehring, executive vice president and Chief of Staff, Oracle. “This year’s winners are industry pioneers leveraging Oracle ERP Cloud and Oracle EPM Cloud solutions to differentiate their organizations and deliver outstanding results.”

A new computing era is coming, and the difference will be as big as going from driving a vehicle with an automatic transmission to using a self-driving car.

We’re entering the era of self-driving software—autonomous, cloud-based services that use machine learning algorithms to eliminate human labor and human error. While the automated software of the past could do the tasks it was told to do, autonomous systems will handle exceptions and get continually better over time.

“Autonomous is a learning system,” says Amit Zavery, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Platform. “It understands what’s going on, understands what has been happening, predicts what is going to happen, and uses a lot more data to figure out what the best next action is.”

Oracle is leading this shift. In October, the company laid out its vision for the autonomous database, whereby the database patches, tunes, and upgrades itself without human intervention, based on the priorities set by the people who run the database.

Oracle is now laying out a broader vision for Oracle Cloud Platform autonomous services, taking this same self-driving approach beyond the database to tasks in application development, application and data integration, mobile and conversational artificial intelligence (AI), business analytics, security, and management. Autonomous platform as a service (PaaS) promises to lower IT costs and improve security because they require less human management and eliminate human error. These services also promise to speed IT deployments, by letting developers jump right to creating new functionality rather than having to spend time on the routine tasks of provisioning, optimizing, tuning, integrating, and securing systems.

“As a user or developer, you don’t have to deal with a lot of those things yourself,” Zavery says. “You just go and build your business functions on top of it.”

“We have been running very large, enterprise-caliber platforms for many, many years, and we have a lot of experience knowing what it takes to run, tune, and manage those systems,” Zavery says. “It’s a learning platform which keeps on improving with the more information we collect and the more users we get on the system.”

Benefits of Autonomous Cloud Platform

Improved security is among the most critical advantages of an autonomous cloud platform. A number of recent large-scale security breaches occurred when a company or organization failed to apply a patch that already was available for its software. Oracle’s autonomous database and all other platform services will apply those patches without a person having to schedule them—requiring no system downtime. And, through the application of AI capabilities like real-time auto cyberthreat detection and remediation, and user behavior analytics, Oracle Autonomous Cloud services lower security risk from both known and unknown vectors.

Lower operating costs and improved system performance are the other big benefits of autonomous PaaS. Eliminating human labor to provision, secure, monitor, tune, back up, and troubleshoot a cloud service saves money, and lets technologists focus on more strategic work. In addition, because an autonomous cloud service is constantly using machine learning to tune itself—updating itself with the latest features, and resizing compute and storage without downtime—the service delivers optimal performance.

So why is now the moment in time to create “self-driving” software? In some ways, it’s because of the same forces propelling the self-driving-car movement.

AI and machine learning algorithms are maturing, to the point where Oracle is embedding those capabilities into more cloud services.

Cloud computing can deliver the compute power, using the GPU processors that machine learning demands, needed for autonomous decision making.

Oracle’s range of platform, infrastructure, and application cloud services gives it the massive amount of data needed to feed and teach a learning algorithm.

“This is the first phase of it, and we’ll keep enhancing this capability as we move forward,” Zavery says, “but this is the next-generation computing platform.”